This article was published in The Citizen Newspaper – Tanzania on July 16, 2024.
One of the achievements we boast of in today’s society is the increased chances of improving life expectancy. This means everyone has higher chances of living longer given the available solutions for diseases and accidents, and particularly in Tanzania, a manageably stable supply of healthy food accessible depending on one’s choices.
A healthy lifestyle makes for a good blend of all these which manifests in the quality of health as well as safety of the person.
Globally, women have higher life expectancy than men. That is to say, most men die earlier than their women counterparts.
It is also an undeniable fact that all over the world men tend to take up more difficult as well as dangerous tasks as compared to women. Many adjustments are needed in the overall approach to life on the part of men, especially in picturing oneself as healthy beyond now.
There is need to speak against the overly normalized tendency of men working in unsafe environments while fully aware of the dangers and fully capable of doing the same in safer ways.
Think of welders who do not wear protective glasses, or bodabodas who move about for years without life vests, despite them knowing how unhealthy such practices are. There are also numerous industrial, farm, and mine workers who do not do even the minimum to help protect themselves from obvious health dangers.
When this becomes attached to the way we work, the effects will be felt later in life, when a certain generation, will before their old age struggle to take care of their health once the effects begin to manifest.
It is time to speak of men’s health, especially because it is generally not the priority of health advocacy, whereby men are presumed to be strong and unaffected.
It is dangerous to have a generation that fits the description of men who are careless about their health and well-being.
While primarily because it kills the functional backbone of our society, from which men are fundamentally indispensable, secondarily because it passes on to the coming generations a false culture of carelessness for the self, which prioritizes work over the dignity, health and safety of oneself.
It is easier to address systemic failures to advocate for health and safety, and even easier to set standards of practice for workplaces or production activities in the country.
But it is difficult to make a person who is careless about himself to have deep down an awareness of the value of health and wellbeing even when working hard to make ends meet for the family, which is the constant excuse by careless workers.
At the moment, life expectancy for men in Tanzania is 66.20 years, which is very average globally. Though there are many factors contributing to life expectancy, we cannot neglect the responsibility of persons in keeping their own life safe.
One of the possible ways to cancel this existing negligence among men is to begin teaching the young ones about these things.
There are probably adults who have even gone through higher education who do not really have knowledge about life expectancy, and if there is anything they can do on their part, however little.
This is an all-round advocacy to avoid diseases and illnesses, accidents, as well as adverse effects of weather and environmental conditions which can cause effects, however mild, both presently and in one’s late adulthood.
Together with that, while being a man is always presented as being full of strength and vitality, it will help to be real as life is, such that that portrayal does not result in carelessness among young people who can be deceived about both their strength as well as the communicated immutability, where they can overrate the possibilities of them being negatively affected by their environment.
We need public men’s health and safety campaigns, especially among the self-employed youths who may have had no privilege of formal education, and yet have the zeal and willingness to do their best to work and earn a living.
Forming young people to be strong should not only be by exposure to the hardness of life, doing things the hard way only, but also by intellectual enrichment whereby they know the reason to do certain things with cautiousness for their wellbeing, even if such effects are not felt immediately.
When men are taught from their childhood that it is completely normal to be sick or weak, their health will have better chances of improvement as such problems can be attended to, as compared to the opposite results when such conditions are ignored and taken for granted.
Many men still think that admitting to being sick or weak as a portrayal of themselves as less than a man.
Thanks
Thank you for passing by sister.